


these nightmares all bend

by sulfuric



Series: totl verse [6]
Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Light Angst, M/M, Memories, also newt's sister is named emma i decided that like 3 years ago and im Sticking To It, brief but!!! it's there, canoeing, gratuitous hunger games references, just Talking About Feelings, really just dialogue, with some nice friend banter in there too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 01:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13447179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sulfuric/pseuds/sulfuric
Summary: thomas tries to sort out some of the more muddled memories of his weeks following newt's death. minho is a good friend.





	these nightmares all bend

**Author's Note:**

> in a shocking turn of events, jamie writes something
> 
> i did this in about an hour after having a thought for a scene in somewhere between, so it kind of references something you'll see eventually. this is kind of vague and pointless, but i thought it'd be nice to have thomas and minho just talking, with a bit of unseen totl stuff rehashed/sorted out. we'll see.
> 
> suicide, self harm, and depression are all discussed a good amount throughout this, so please take care of yourself if that's the kind of thing that's gonna make you feel Bad

They’re paddling over some stupidly named lake in the middle of August when a thought comes to Thomas’ mind. 

“Did Newt try to kill himself before he met me?” 

Minho, as expected, is taken aback. Thomas tries to take that first second to find the answer in his tensing of his shoulders, but nothing is revealed. The canoe glides to a shaky stop, and Minho turns, planting his feet in the centre of the boat. 

“How did you know that?” His voice is barely there, a breath. 

And that’s his answer, of course. Thomas resists the urge to expel his lunch into the lake, recalling the particular scar he’d laid his finger on months ago.  _ That  _ had always been real, but now its origin was without a doubt.

Minho slumps, hands loose around his paddle. “He made me swear never to tell anyone. And I - I didn’t. Not a soul.” He blinks weakly at Thomas then, realizing.

“I wanted to know if it was real. I - I still don’t know, sometimes.”

“The things he said to you.”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck.”

“ _ Yeah _ .”

A couple minutes of silence pass them by, and then: “What else did he tell you?”

Thomas snorts weakly. “Oh, are we doing the hunger games thing now?”

“The what?” 

“You know. Real or not real.”

“Oh.” Minho pauses for a second, then laughs. “Sure, Katniss.”

“No, you’re Katniss.”

“Why am I Katniss?”

If they weren’t on the same boat, Thomas’d tip Minho for the offended look on his face right now. He settles for rolling his eyes instead. “‘Cause if we’re doing real not real, then I’m Peeta ‘cause I’m the one that doesn’t know if it’s real or not. And fuck off, Katniss is the badass anyway.”

He considers this. “Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry I disrespected her.”

“Damn right you’re sorry.” Minho lets out a chuckle at that and they fall silent once more, both having given up on paddling long ago. Thomas pulls his lunch from his backpack, a bagel sandwich. A memory sparks.

“Told me you always hated me. Wished you’d never been friends with me,” Thomas mentions between chews. He says it with a certain lightness to his voice, but the way that his eyes wait for the reaction, wide, maybe just a bit too searching, surely give it away.

“What the fuck?” is Minho’s immediate response, accompanied by a short laugh. But then he sees Thomas’ expression, blank, and backpedals. “Dude. No.”

A breath of relief is let out then, smile working its way rather uneasily onto Thomas’ face. “Yeah, okay, I was pretty sure that one was, uh. Not true.”

“ _ Pretty sure _ ?”

“Listen, man, I don’t know if you recall but I wasn’t exactly in the most stable state of mind.”

He tilts his head to the side. “Fair enough. But still.”

Thomas waves a hand, cream cheese coating his fingertips. “That one was towards the end. When he got-” He doesn’t know how to finish that sentence, but he doesn’t have to, because Minho knows. He doesn’t really  _ know _ , but he knows enough to know what Thomas means. And that’s as far as he’s willing to get into  _ that  _ part of it. “It’s more the stuff in between I have trouble with. You know, the plausible stuff.”

“Like?”  
Thomas hums, leaning back carefully. The sun shines down, definitely already burning the bridge of his nose. “Oh, alright, okay,” he starts, almost laughing. Minho braces himself. “Uh, was your first kiss with Newt’s cousin and did she turn out to be a lesbian after?”

“Oh my God.”

“Holy shit, really?” Thomas sits up, clutching at his stomach. “Minho, that’s incredible.”

“But-” Minho cuts himself off, arms crossed. After a second of pouting, his face changes. Thomas stops laughing. “How - how could you-”

“How could I know? I know, man, I know.” There’s a bit of a tension in the air then, unexpected. If Thomas’ hallucinations were really just a product of his own mind, then how in the hell could Newt - anti-Newt - have told him something that only Minho and the real Newt knew? 

For the first time in a long time, Minho looks. He looks  _ scared _ . Thomas feels the bile jumping up into his throat and forces a light-hearted laugh. “Maybe he actually told me once. Maybe I was drunk, or forgot about it, and my brain decided to bring it back that day for whatever reason.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Minho muses, shoulders unclenching. God. “That dick.” He smirks, and he’s back. 

“So when you and Brenda break up, is she gonna date Teresa?”

Minho rolls his eyes, and whacks Thomas on the knee with his paddle. “She can date whoever the hell she wants. Teresa’s a catch.”

“You’re not wrong there.”

“ _ Oh _ ?” 

“No - no, dude. No.”

“Mhm.”

“It’s not-” he cuts himself off. It’s pointless to try and fight Minho and his wiggling eyebrows. He probably deserves it, anyway. After years of him and Newt teasing about Brenda, he probably deserved it. But then again, he’d bugged the shit out of both him and Newt (separately, of course) before they finally got together. So no, fuck you, Minho.

“ _ Anyway _ ,” Thomas starts again, rolling his eyes all the way around for effect, “here’s another one for ya.”

“Alright, hit me.”

He takes a breath. “Emma never knew about any of Newt’s stuff, right?”  _ That  _ much Thomas knew was true, at least as long as he was alive. He distinctly remembers sitting at Newt’s bedside, not sleeping for three days after his jump. Thomas will never forget when they were just talking on that first day after he woke up, and then Newt’s eyes shifted, his voice as low and as quick as Thomas had ever heard:  _ I didn’t jump, I fell.  _ And then there was his little sister’s voice and a big, albeit shaky, smile plastered onto Newt’s face.

“No, she didn’t,” Minho confirms, frown showing he was already not liking where this one was going.

“Okay, yeah. So. On the third? Maybe? Like when I started my first round of meds and it started to get bad, he told me. He, uh.” He doesn’t want to say it, already knows how ridiculous it’s going to sound. But he has to know. “He told me that at the funeral when Emma went up to see his body or whatever she saw all his scars and now she knows everything and is probably going to spiral into a terrible depression and end up just like him because it’s quite genetic in their family and it’s all my fault for ruining her innocence?”

And Minho just stares, mouth open, brain visibly computing. Thomas continues, rambling, not knowing how else to fill the silence. “And I mean he’s probably not entirely wrong because if it is genetic there is a pretty good chance that she’ll be depressed at some point as terrible as that sounds but also  _ that’s  _ not my fault even if everything else kinda is because-”

“Thomas! Shut the fuck up!” 

And he does, gladly. Because that is a hole he really doesn’t want to spend his afternoon spiralling down again. Instead, he waits patiently for Minho to speak again.

“Okay, first off, that’s fucking stupid. I know that at least some part of you knows that, but Jesus, Thomas. Not. Real.”

“Okay, oka-”

“Not done. First of all, yes, Emma doesn’t know any of Newt’s, like, really fucked up stuff, but she’s not stupid. She’s nine, not five. She probably knows depression runs in the family. Remember when Newt’s uncle killed himself back in grade nine?”

Oh. Thomas had nearly forgotten. “Yeah,” he says weakly.

“Yeah, I was with Newt when it happened. Emma knows. And she probably knew her brother wasn’t entirely happy, either. So like, no life-shattering revelations were had, other than the whole he’s dead thing.”

“Okay, but-”

“And no, wait, what the fuck. I don’t know if anyone ever told you this, but it wasn’t an open fucking casket, Thomas. Who puts car crash victims in an open casket?”

Well, he guesses he never really thought that part through. “You’ve got me there.”

“Yeah I’ve got you there, dipshit. Not real. Myth busted.”

Thomas lets out a breath of laughter at that, letting his head fall into his hands out of pure exasperation. See, he  _ knew _ it wasn’t true, but try telling that to him while his dead boyfriend feeds it directly into his soul. That kinda stuff  _ sticks _ , no matter how ridiculous or irrational. “Thanks, man.”

“‘S’all good, dude. I know that stuff is hard to sort through.”

“Yeah. It fuckin’ is, Min.” They share a smile then, and Thomas feels like the luckiest guy in the world to have a best friend like Minho. 

Then the moment passes, and Thomas bites back a laugh. “Least I know for sure you’ve turned  _ at least _ one girl gay, now.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

**Author's Note:**

> if you still care about this little world of mine 2.5 years later, i can't tell you how much i love you. come talk to me on [tumblr](http://00250.tumblr.com).
> 
> (also somewhere between isn't dead. it's getting there, slowly.)


End file.
